Dreaming of becoming global

I wrote a blog with the same heading in July 2006. I still believe in what I wrote, but wow has my focus changed. In the original blog I focused on trying to convince boards to seek funding outside their own limited national economies. Since then I have given up. Partly because those who have the openness of mind and aptitude to do it are doing it and those that do not… well what can I say.

I recently did a workshop in which I tried a new mind mapping concept. The idea was to create a map of who you are as an individual. I asked the attendees to list facts about themselves relating to the following themes: family and friends, education and career, life altering experiences and other facts. The idea was to paint a picture of what ones framework was. I then selected a random general question that called for a personal answer. The results were telling. When you try to answer a personal question based on a framework that you wrote down you immediately know if you described yourself accurately or wishfully. Now ask yourself based on your revised mind map: "Do I have a born global mentality?" If the answer is negative and you still aspire to be global, then all I can say is that you need to boldly broaden your framework.

We dream of growing our businesses to a size that they will be remembered and recognized globally. We try to achieve this dream through through the constraints that our framework sets us. In most cases we try to mold the rest of the world around our reality (framework), which is always sad to watch from the side lines. In rare cases we recognize our limited framework and launch ourselves into the void to recreate our framework. You could argue that the ability to take a leap of faith is ingrained into one’s framework, but I would like to think that we always have a choice… our framework just makes our selection bias towards a certain outcome.

A colleague of mine ones said:"There are a lot of visionary technologies in Finland. A pity that they were invented there and not here."

At a recent conference one of the speakers asked: "Why have the Israelis been able to list countless companies on the Nasdaq and we (aka Finns) have not?" I would say that reason is that the Israelis are less confined by their frameworks. They are less lulled by the comfort and security of their current state and they are more open to expanding their frameworks.

To wrap this up I would just say that to be globally successful you need to have a global framework… otherwise keep on dreaming.